Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship

[wumeow]

> Subsection (a) of this section shall apply only to persons who are born within the United States after 30 days from the date of this order.

Well, at least they aren't trying to enforce this retroactively.

[declan_roberts]

Birthright citizenship is one of those things that I thought was with us since the beginning. Turns out I was wrong.

[jeffbee]

It basically was. The common law doctrine of citizenship by birth prevailed from the founding up to Dred Scott.

The reason it is uncommon worldwide is because nobody practices common law outside of the Anglophone former colonies and England itself. England had absolute birthright citizenship right up until Thatcher

[zephyrus1985]

I believe it now doesn't apply for to parents that are here illegally. Not taking sides but just pointing the nuance

[aliasxneo]

How would the country work without it? Thousands of non-citizens would be added to the country on a daily basis.

[legitster]

Establishing citizenship was less important when the US had open borders, which it more or less did for most of its existence.

[insane_dreamer]

Isn't this something Congress would have to pass a law on? EO's can be overturned by the next President.

[verdverm]

The 14th Amendment is already the law. SCOTUS has previously ruled that the exception to birthright are quite narrow. This EO is all about getting the case back to SCOTUS so they can change a previous ruling.

Legal Eagle has a good rundown of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knH3v5aEe_g

[mcphage]

What garbage, what absolute filth. What an embarrassment to our nation.

[daft_pink]

Pretty sure the courts are going to strike this one down. Like Biden’s FTC, Trump’s immigration proclamations are going to go nowhere fast.

[jeffbee]

Bringing norms to a gunfight?

[laristine]

Trump issued an executive order ending birthright citizenship in America.

[verdverm]

Expect this to go all the way to SCOTUS. I would imagine multiple lower courts will rule on it in the near-term, probably with injunctions and such. Multiple lawsuits challenging it have already been prepared and will be filed shortly

Certainly reminiscent of Bannon's shock and awe strategy from '16

[rvz]

False. I would have agreed with you if this order also included ending it also for all "US Citizens" and "lawful permanent residents", but it does not.

Read it again and you can clearly see that it is for those who are *not born to permanent "US citizens" or "lawful permanent residents"*.

>>> (c) Nothing in this order shall be construed to affect the entitlement of other individuals, including children of lawful permanent residents, to obtain documentation of their United States citizenship.

[ryan_lane]

Every Trump related post today is being flagged. Where's the editorial oversight here, @dang?

[dang]

HN isn't a current affairs site, so users tend to flag most of the hottest stories-of-the-day. That's expected and desirable.

Is there a specific submission that you feel should be getting a discussion on HN? Keep in mind that the mandate here is thoughtful conversation about stories that gratify intellectual curiosity (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

[blackeyeblitzar]

Very few countries have birthright citizenship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli). I still find it to be a strange concept. It seems like in the US, birthright citizenship isn’t granted in the constitution or laws directly but was the result of a court ruling, which is extra strange. I’m not sure if this is the right way to go about it, but I think removing it is the right direction to have a sense of sovereignty and make citizenship meaningful.

[motorest]

> Very few countries have birthright citizenship

Very few countries have a huge statue at the entrance of a major port with a big bronze plaque bearing the message "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free (...)".

[jeffbee]

The 14th Amendment was a direct rebuttal of a court case: Dred Scott v. Sandford. Dred Scott ruled that Black people could not be citizens, because they were property not people, including a "free negro" because they descended from property. The Citizenship Clause intentionally rebuts the ruling. There is no other way to interpret the Clause.

[laristine]

The United States has a lot of unique traits that few other countries have (American exceptionalism), birthright citizenship being just one characteristic. I'd think an executive order is just testing the water, but to change it definitively requires a constitutional amendment.

[ttyprintk]

It’s most of the Americas; 3 dozen or so in total. Saying “very few” is cover for Trump to lie that it’s “only one”.